Putative Genes Identified on Two Growth Conditions of Ganoderma boninense

Ganoderma boninense Pat. is an infamous facultative fungal pathogen that has been the causal agent of basal stem rot (BSR) disease in oil palm (Elaeis guineensis). The disease has caused the deaths of palms as young as 12-24 months and has been a serious threat to the oil palm industry in South East Asian countries, especially Malaysia and Indonesia. The acreage of plantation infected with BSR disease in Peninsular Malaysia was recorded to be about 400,000 hectares. Fundamental studies on G. boninense are limited, especially on the genes involved in pathogenicity. Therefore, to further understand the fundamental biology of the species on genes involved in degradation, the mycelial of G. boninense was cultivated on two different mediums, fresh potato dextrose agar (PDA) in petri plates as the standard growth media and rubber woodblocks (RWB) as the comparative. RNA from mycelia grown on PDA (PER71) and from RWB (PER71-47) were extracted and later sequenced via the Illumina platform. Differential gene expression of the RNA-seq data identified 28 highly expressed genes (e-value between 1e-5 to 1e-140), where 15 genes were identified from mycelia grown on RWB, whereas 13 genes were expressed by mycelia grown on PDA. The genes functions were identified based on a similarity search against the Pfam database.